Have you ever wondered why most open source communities or projects never grow? Well most people of course have not, but I have, which probably already leads us to the main reason: Nobody can see that this problem even exists.
This is kind of a follow up to my last blog post, but with a more specific example, I had lots of experience with myself.
Most people probably never considered to join that movement anyway, since they are not for free or open source software, but this advice is for people that are for free and open source software and understand why you should be for it.
This is another important life lesson I have learned. I'm not sure yet if it is a universal rule and one should absolutely never join groups or if it just should be a general guideline that one should be skeptic of the groups and joining them sometimes is justified. After many experiences of that kind I tend to think it is some kind of universal rule and absolute statements sound better anyway.
Recently I realized how genius the invention of social media is, it is probably one of the biggest cons to ever exist.
Let me make an analogy:
Well quitting Opengameart turned out to be much more complicated than I thought. I hardly ever experienced so much back-stabbing and dishonest behavior. Initially I wanted to go through all lies and correct them, but I thought I keep it short instead, since the fact, that they constantly have to censor me should be proof enough, that their version does not hold water and I don't really care about that drama, I just wanted to leave, but they would not let me.
I decided to quit Opengameart, it was a hard decision, but finally I was fed up with it.
This is also kind of a little follow up to my blog post "The benefits of quitting social media" where I explain the many downsides to social media and since I want to practice what I preach, I decided to quit that social media platform as well.
So you have to consider you are supposed to be the good guy, fighting against the evil big companies with their evil proprietary products and then everything you do is trying to steal their intellectual property, steal their fame, steal their creativity, steal their brand, steal their users etc. Sure many companies do that as well, but in the business world, the default is still, that every company has it's own product, in their own style, their own brand name etc, but in the open source game development scene the default seems to be, to just steal everything and be a copycat. This amazes me again and again how nobody can see the issue in there.
Initially I believed, like probably many others as well, that there is a way to progress open source projects using crowdsourced funding methods. However now after some experience myself, having met other developers and observing the scene a lot I came to the conclusion that it is not only a bad option, but probably a total delusion, since I not only failed myself, but also everyone else I saw failed as well.
Some time ago I decided to quit all or almost all social media. The main reason probably is that I read articles about how social media has been scientifically proven to make you unhappy and less productive etc. I will make a short list of the benefits of quitting social media I encountered:
1. More happiness
2. More time
3. Saves work updating all the profiles
4. More motivation
5 .More efficient working
6. More willpower
7. Less distraction
9. Less stress
This is a phenomenon I observed for quite a while now and I call it "The emperors new games" based on the fairy tale "The emperors new clothes" because the phenomenon is so similar.
The emperors new games are games that look new and great, but in reality they are nothing new or great, in short overhyped games.